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A Homecoming Disaster

Article by Former Rutgers star and NFL Super Bowl Champion, Darnell Stapleton.

Saturday’s game against Tulane left many fans as well as myself pretty much speechless. I mentioned last week that Tulane was a solid team and was going to come to play us hard and they did just that!

Tulane didn’t win the game cause they had better athletes than Rutgers, they won because they did more of the little things right and/or better than Rutgers did! They converted the 3rd downs they needed to convert, they made open field tackles and got turnovers, which are some of the basics to winning a game in any conference.

Rutgers now have a short week to try and fix there issues before UCONN comes in town Friday night to kick-off Big East play!

For Rutgers to win Friday night and the rest of the games this season, they have to find out who they are as an offensive. Right now they look confused.

An offense objective is to create confusion for the defense not confuse themselves! One second they are a gun-run offense, then a wild-cat offense, then a pro-style offense, there is no consistency or rhythm to the offense.

There inconsistency is hurting the team because they are not sustaining any long drives, which in hand is not allowing the defense time to rest and tired defenses give up big plays and points!

Major key to figuring out who you are as an offense is figuring out who your starting quarterback  is will be, Savage, Sanu or Dodd who besides the INT at the end of last game looked better than Savage!

Dodd came into the game and played with the confidence that Savage should have been playing with! And as much wild-cat snaps Rutgers have run so far this season I may be right in guessing that Sanu may have just as many snaps at QB as Savage! Would it be to strange to see Sanu play QB full time?? He was a high school quarterback!

Just like the offensive side of the ball the defense has a lot of work to do before friday, mainly on tackling and there zone coverages! Tackling was awful, there were too many missed tackles, and too many times over the last two weeks running backs and wide receivers gaining yards after first contact! YAC is eliminated with better tackling!

The other issue they must address is there zone coverage, because Tulane’s tight end looked like an All-Pro. He was open almost every pass play and was running the same route!

For people that don’t know what zone coverage is: it’s not just everyone standing in a spot waiting for the ball to be thrown at them! Zone is still a man concept but in a area/zone so if someone comes in your zone you are on him until he leaves your zone and goes into another players zone! If they can fix those minor issues Rutgers defense shouldn’t have a problem stopping UCONN’s offense.

Fridays game is a big game, not just because it’s UCONN but more so it the next opponent on the schedule and avoiding a 3 game losing streak is a must for this you g team!

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